If dogs could speak...
Sunday, August 20, 2006
TagI've been busy the last few weeks and returned to find that I've been tagged by Raisa the Brazilian Husky. As I understand it, I am supposed to reveal five weird things about me (wow, tough choices), and turn around and tag five new dogs. This blog tag game has been going on for a while, and it appears that every husky in the world who blogs has been tagged at least once, some twice. I don't want to tag them again, so I will give you ten weird things about me, and hope we can call it even. So, here goes...
1. My real, complete name is Doctor His Eminence Sir Woof. People also call me Woofwoof (they think it's cute doublespeak. I think they stutstutter), Bigfoot (to run better in the snow -- in my dreams, that is), Wookie (from Star Wars fame -- we have the same woo), Darwoof (after Charles Darwin since I revised his theory of evolution), Wolfowitzki (after Paul Wolfowitz who was Deputy Secretary of Defense and is now President of the World Bank. The -ki at the end is due to my Siberian heritage), and Wolforamaaaaaaaaa (more aaa's the harder I bite them).
2. I generally disdain water. When it rains, I tiptoe around the puddles, trying not to dirty my big feet. But I dig big holes in the yard, let them fill up with water, and jump in and sit there motionless, hot tub-style, water up to my neck. People freak out when they look out the window and see a dog head lying in the grass. It's usually their first real-life Godfather experience. I tell them some people have rock gardens, and they have dog gardens.
3. Like most huskies, I howl mournful, soulful Siberian songs. But I like to climb to the top of a shed in the backyard and howl at the neighborhood on hot summer nights. No reason to waste such a beautiful singing voice, so I might as well broadcast it to the world. The reflection from the steel roof of the shed helps carry the songs miles and miles. Hey, what do you expect? It's free. Would you rather listen to William Hung instead?
4. Did I mention I climb ladders? Yes I go up ladder steps just like people, well, maybe better than some people. The big feet help. It doesn't matter if the ladders are made of aluminum or fiberglass or wood. I climb them just the same. The view from up there at night is incredible. The neighbors call me the Homeland Security patrol. Not an enemy cat or squirrel will enter these territories without delicious consequences.
5. I usually sleep on my back, big feet up in the air. But when I lay on my belly, I like to cross my front legs, right leg first then left leg on top. If you uncross my legs or try to switch them left first then right, I will cross them back in the right order. Once. The second time I bite (hence the nickname Wolforamaaaaaaaaa).
6. I am not a picky eater. The type of food I like best is called "lots of." For desserts I prefer carrots, and bits of that Chinese spinach called "gailan" that the neighbors throw over (it's leafy and makes my poop green). But my most favorite snacks ever are raccoon (I've caught three -- bake them in the sun for two days until they acquire that beef jerky toughness and smell) and Cheez-It (a Nobel prize for whoever invented this heavenly thing).
7. It's no big secret that I blog. I also read lots of books. To keep me inside the people built a tall fence around the yard but one time I dug a tunnel under it and got out. I went to the city library about five miles away and walked up to the second floor before someone stopped me. They saw the house phone number on my tag and sent me home. I never found the roadkill barbeque recipe book. That's how I got to improvise the raccoon jerky method.
8. I once received a credit card application addressed to Woof Wolfowitzki. No kidding, and no Nigerian bank scam either. They gave me a credit limit of $7800, probably because of my World Bank connection, although I have more raccoon bones than pennies. Of course I didn't bother sending it in. The people have plenty of credit cards already, and they never noticed a little charge here and a little charge there to Big Dog Sled Repair Service, Raccoon Anonymous and HULA (Husky United Liberation Army).
9. The people keep a very large bag of my dog hair in the garage. Maybe they plan to knit it into a blanket for the children of Sudan, or the endangered chickens of PETA. But wait, you want to know weird things about me, not weird things about them (that would fill volumes).
10. I jog. The people jog. At different speeds. When I was a puppy my little feet couldn't keep up with them. They would run ahead of me and look back, shouting encouragement "Come on Wolfie, come on Wolfowitzki!" like mad dorks. It was utterly embarrassing, but it didn't take long until my feet got bigger and I outran them. Now they hang on for dear life at the end of the leash, screaming "Slow down, Bigfooooot!" You should see the look of sheer horror on their faces. Priceless.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 5:42 AM 10 comments
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Asahi Super Dry WeatherWeather is complicated business, even before the arrival of Michael "The Hurricane" D. Brown and FEMA. First there is this confusion about Fahrenheit and Celsius. Personally I think the use of Celsius should be limited to police reports and autopsies where numbers don't really matter anymore. For example, the patient dies of acute interoginkoba sceptomicenkolititis, and had a body temperature of 419.2C when found. See, something like that might make you think that the physician really earned his golf club membership, even if the most doctor-like thing he ever did was to spend several months at Club Med.
But it is not only temperature that influences weather. There is also humidity and wind speed, both of which can change how comfortable you feel. 75.2F at 22% humidity and 9 mph wind might feel like 23C at 59% humidity and 12 mph wind. But you can't really expect people to always have a supercomputer with them to calculate these things, or to run to weather pages on the web to look it up each time they plan a trip.
Leave it to the Japanese to figure it out, and what they came up with is truly ingenious, better than anything they have ever put into your Toyota SUV or Mazda submarine. Yahoo Japan's online weather service has started to provide four new indices this summer to tell you just exactly how it is outside. They have a "UV index," a "sweat index," a "heat exhaustion index," and finally a "beer index." The first three are somewhat self-explanatory. The last one is too, I suppose, and here they rate each day on a scale of 0 to 100, and that rating value helps you decide how many beers are best to drink. For instance, a 0-19 day deserves one beer, a 20-39 day gets two beers and so on, up to five beers for a 80-100 day.
Instead of saying that it is partly cloudy in Tokyo with a temperature of 79F, humidity of 83%, and wind of 9 mph from the South, you say simply that today is a four-beer day in Tokyo. Very straightforward and to the point. We all understand what a four-beer day is, no further explanations needed. I am sure that some people might claim that every day is a many-beer day, but at least now they can point to the supporting evidence. If it's on the web, it must be true.
That really makes these dog days of summer a lot easier to accept. I have a feeling that today is going to be a beautiful six-pack scorcher already.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 6:55 AM 7 comments
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Dog Howl
Susan Butcher, 1954-2006
Four-time Iditarod champion, 1986, 1987, 1988 and 1990
- posted by Woofwoof @ 6:55 AM 4 comments
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Crappy UpdateIn case you have been wondering, it is now safe to go to Japan without bringing along Whiff the poop smell eliminator. Last September there was a story about Kazuo Hoshino, an eccentric Tokyo resident who seemed to enjoy harassing his neighbors by storing his "bathroom waste" in a hole he dug in the backyard, then cooking it in a small pot so that the stink permeated the entire neighborhood. Kinda like what dogs do, minus the cooking.
The neighborhood collected a thousand signatures in a petition to police and the city government to make Hoshino stop his daily routine, but officials claimed that they were powerless since city laws against foul odors applied only to factories and businesses, not to individuals. This went on for about three years. The stench was so bad that some neighbors had to move away, and some nearby businesses shut down for lack of customers, all except for the local McDonald's which was thriving. That's not to suggest that Big Macs smell like crap. The taste, however, is a whole other matter.
Well, things have changed. Last month, police arrested Hoshino for violating an environmental protection ordinance of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. Why it is a violation now and not in the last several years isn't clear. I suppose the environment is even more fragile today than ever before, and needs all the protection it can get. Police went to Hoshino's house and removed over 250 lbs of waste from the pit, probably to be used as evidence in his trial. Life must be good again in Tokyo. You can now open the windows to hear birds sing and let the fresh air in, and not have to put up with the smell of Hoshino, only the smell of the local McDonald's.
So there you have it. It is certainly not big news, but I do hope to give you closure.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 11:21 PM 5 comments
